At 10 00 p. M. Eastern, Caroline Glick argues the u. S. Pursuit of a twostate solution to the israelpalestine conflict has failed miserably and is base owned palestinian claims to handle that are unfounded. We wrap up at 11 00 p. M. Eastern with bernard schwartz, author of just say yes. That all happens next on cspan2s booktv. Jared orsi is next. He recounsels the life of explorer zebulon pike, the name sake of pikes peak in the rockie mountains. This is an hour and 15 minutes. Thank you all for coming out. So im going to talk about a book ive recently published on zebulon pike. Came out month before last, in january, and i had some slides for you, most of them are images that i took, and i tide the best i could to try and get to the spot where pike was on the same day of the year. Theres one where i cheated, and i have him in the winter time in a shot i took in june. So theres one that didnt work out. Most of them are on or near the exact day he was there. The other caveat i want to offer before we get started is that some of the slides are a little texty. They have a lot of words on them. And i dont thats by design. I dont necessarily envision youll read every single word but i wanted to give readers in the book and also you all here tonight, a sense of the kind of language that he used and a feel for the language of the time that i have encountered in my sources, and so dont worry about reading every last word. Im not going to read them to you. But if theyll kind of convey an impression of the language of the time, and ill paraphrase the most important points you need to understand. So, if you cant read all of it, dont worry about that. Let me jump in. Im going to talk for about 45 minutes, and then i below be glad to take ill be glad to take questions and answers as long or as short as your interested in it. After the introduction theres two parts to the talk. One about pikes early life and the other about his adventures in the rockie mountains. So lets begin on january 20, 1807. Pike was the commander of a u. S. Military expedition to explore the louisiana purchase, and the expedition had become badly lost, and they had wandered about in the rockie mountains for several weeks, and on this day, pike found himself near here in the Wet Mountain Valley of colorado, near the southwest of pueblo, and the expedition was in a desperate situation. The men were too week to go on but two imperiled not to. They were cold and hungry and inadequately clothed and at any time know where they were. On this day pike discovered that two of his men, john sparks and thomas dari had frostbite so bad they could not walk knee any longer, and so turning them with as much ammunition and food as he could spare, he exhorted them to resist their fate with fortitude, and with that he left them, abandoned crippled men alone in the wilderness. I want you to recall this word fortitude. This is going to be a word that has powerful meaning for pike and that well come back to repeatedly throughout the event this evening. So, two weeks later, from the safety of a small fort that he built on the yonder side of the oforbidding mountains in the san louis valley he sent a rescue party back to retrieve sparks and dari, and the rescuers found sparks and dourty alive but still unable to travel, and they returned to pike on february 17th, and in a dark and desperate gesture they had removed some of the bones that the cold had separated from their toes and sent them back with the rescuers, begging pike by all that was sacred not to leave them alone in the wilderness. Little did they know my heart, pike wrote in his journal, if they could suspect me of conduct so ungenerous, and he vowed to do whatever was necessary to deliver them to their, quote, grateful country. That concept of gratitude as something that a nation owes people who sacrifice for it physically is another concept well come back to. So, what are we to make of all this . Who was pike . The question i want to ask today. Was he an intrepid explorer whose hardiness in the face of difficulty opened the west to his nation, or was he a reckless commander whose poor decisionmaking exposed his men to unnecessary danger . Or perhaps, as some he speculated, spy whose secret orders to reconnoiterer santa fe impelled him anward even in the face of extreme danger. Pike left us few records of his early life, and as a result, most historians who have tried to fishing him out have looked soley at his official military journals and reports, which are too big thick volumes. Theyre very unwieldy, even contradictory documents and as a result, were left with those contradictory images of him. What my book tries to do is employ some new strategy for understanding pike. One thing i did was i hired a genealogist who compiled a whole bunch of documents about his early life that no pike historian had ever look at before. Another thing i did was to look at some letters. He is only left us, other than his official military reports, only left us 14 letters in his own hand. But i wrung as much meaning out of the 14 letters is a could, reading between the lines and trying to read them in the context of the time, and wheres privilege historians dropped in close in their work on pike in the past, i really took them seriously from an an analytical perspective. Theyre all from the time period of his young adult life so give us a glimpse of him at a formative moment. Ive Read Everything that pike read. We have about a dozen different books we know he read, that he said he read or was influenced by, and ive gone back and read all those things in order to try and get a sense of what kind of information about his culture and world did he have available to him, and then fortunately, as youll see, i pay close attention to the natural environment, especially the mens bodies. Sparks and dourtys toes and other aspects of their physical experience of exploration and the landscape, and after doing this im convinced that above all pike was nationalist. Thats the single best word to characterize his personality and his ideas, is nationalism. This wasnt a given at the time. Because america, at this time, was a young and fragile nation. We didnt know it was going to succeed as a great democratic experiment, as we know today. Many at the time believed that it would not and perhaps even should not survive. Not everybody dvded to cast their lot with the nation. But early in life pike became persuaded that the pest way to advance his best way to advance his considerable amibitions was to sacrifice physically for his nation. And his actions in the rockie mountains need to be read in this light, i think. So, lets town pikes early life. He was born in 1779. This is the middle of the american revolution. His father is a soldier, and pike grows up at Frontier Army posts, like this one down on the ohio river, a little east of its confluence with the mississippi. And as products of the american revolution, military forts like this one are markers of a historic shift in western civilization history. For the first time in western civilization in the middle and late part of the 18th century, its no longer unanimously accepted that the only i would to get ahead in life is to be born to high social station. That you can actually advance, you can raise your social status through virtue visual fewous behavior. This is becoming an increasingly widely seasoned idea at the end of the 1700s. So pike was interested in this concept of virtue. What did virtue entail . Well, a few stuffy old englishmen thought it had to do with manners, and in particular it had to do with bodies and how you carried yourself and how you behaved in public was displayed your virtue. So a gentleman should never be caught sitting with a immobility. George washington was made by this tutor to copy the 101 precepts of civility from which he learned wisdom such as not spitting in the fire when other people are trying to grill meat. Advice like this was ever present. A thriving advice literature sprung up on both sides of the atlantic to counsel young men, especially men there was a parallel literature for women, but to counsel young men on how they had to behave, often bodily in order to get ahead in life. So these advicegivers cancelled against excessive shiver aring or scratching or snapping of fingers or drumming of table tops, rubbing of hands, biting of nails and taps of toes. No bodily position no matter how minute, was too small to escape the attention of those who would read into that bodily position evidence of its owners virtue. And at this point, i would like im going to try to fiddle with this for just a second to see if i can get rid of that thing. Apparently not. There we go. All right. That was distracting me. Well let that go. At this point id like you to think about bodies as the point of Human Experience where the cultural intersects with the natural. So if when we talk about brides, it offer brings to mine things like status and wealth and beauty, occupation, desire, things we might call cultural. So, tonight, im dressed up and you all were able to come more casually. That signals the different roles we play in tonights event. This is how the english mannerists thought about bodies, about markers of one0s social position. But bodies are also part of the natural world. Were organisms that eat and drink and sleep and seek pleasure, and try and avoid anxiety and sense pain. We get sick. Were born. And live and die. And decompose. We produce waste. We need energy and warmth and water and security. So, all of these things we might call we might describe as being part of the natural world, and so my talk tonight in a nutshell, if you boil it down to its core, is that pikes life is a story of the decisions that he made. What he decided to do when his body met the culture of the early republic, and the nature or the environment of the frontier, the ohio valley that he grew up in, and the results, the consequences of those decisions that he made and how they affected his activities in the rockie mountains. Ill say that again. That it came out kind of garbled. His life is a story in many ways of what he decided to do when his body melt the culture of the early republic and the environment of the frontier, simultaneously. And how those life decisions he made shaped his behavior in the rockie mountains. So, pikes letters suggest that as a young man, like most americans, he ate this manners stuff up. His favorite advice track seems to have been this little book called economy of human life by a fellow named robert dodgely. One of the most important and influential english publishers of the middle of the 18th 18th century, and like the other mannerists dodgely talked a lot about bodily positioning. He condemned people who used their body to draw attention to themselves. But oneonone deers how a Frontier Youth like pike, who was in no danger of having the financial means to let fancy clothes or public parading soley his virtue. How he would have read such counsel. Dodgely and other writers of the literature imagined their readers would be sitting by firesides in philadelphia parlors, but remember that pike is reading this out on the ohio frontier, in forts, and on the ohio frontier, life was far from comfortable. Pike joined the army in 1795, at the age of 15. And for the next decade, he spends most of his time as a river runner. He is transporting military supplies up and down the ohio river and its tributaries to keep the towns and the frontier posts well provisioned. But travel on the rivers in this day was muddy, messy, difficult, unpleasant, sorts of work, and so when the current was high it tested the strength, the muscles of the men on the rivers. When the current was too low, they had to worry about they had to guard against the danger of shoals and snags, and when it got really low they had to tike the goos off the boat and portage the boats and goods on the backs of animals. Has held with men who weighedded waded into the river water with chunks of ice floating buy. For pike and the dozens of men he commanded on the river, most of the time they were transporting supplies they were too hot, hungry, tired, cold, sunburn, mosquitobitten or exhausted. And in this environment, bodily discipline involve considerably more endurance and suffering than simply remembering not to scratch. Or walk at a walking at a measured pace. So frontier life battered mens bodies, and pike occasionally considered quitting the army. He saw the example that it set for older officers, including his father, who was mentally and physically significantly die bell tated by the time he reached the age of 50, and pike thought, i dont want this life. This is going to beat me up and then chew me up and ill be kicked out of the army when im no longer useful. But he didnt quit. And here dodgely provides us some clues, perhaps, about why he didnt. Dodgely devote an entire section of his book to the concept of fortitude, which, as you can see from these quotes, he meant in quite a physical sense. The volume was filled with affirmations exhorting young men like pike to show fortitude in the face of hardship. This is the same word he used in exorting sparks and dougherty to. Act with fortitude. And if he takes the advice he could easily have reasoned himself into accepting the armys promise of physical suffering and called it a great virtue. All of this was also reinforced by some high profile examples, one of which is George Washington in 1796 he voluntarily steps down from the presidency and declines to run for a third president ial term to which he almost certainly could have been elected. Dodgely not everybody could sacrifice in the way a president could, by giving up a third term in office. Now, dodgely nevertheless he said, all are not called to guide armies and nations. Not everybody is called to be a general or a president. But that doesnt mean that everybody is not called to be virtues. Everybody has something they can sacrifice, and you can be virtuous, humbler people than president s and generals can be virtue yous in doing well to that which is committed to thai charge. So dodgely is calling everybody to verse fewous sacrifice. The question is, what does pike have. No reputation no. We no honor no education no property. What does somebody a young man on the frontier like pike that he can sacrifice one day in one of the margins on of a page of dodgelys book, next to the entry of sincerity, pike scribbled this. So that is what pike can sacrifice for his nation. His life. His body. But its not just his own body he is going to discipline for the nation. He also once he is an officer, begins to discipline the men under his charge. So one quick story. Cold morning, december, 1801, he is the crew of 70 men and a tent craft fleet that is carrying supplies down the ohio river to build a new fort near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Now, the fleet consist iowa kind of boats. Supply boats, which were very heavy, that carried all the goods, and company boats, which were much lighter, that carried simply the men and maybe some of their personal supplies. And at dawn, after the sound of the revelly, the pike soldiers hustle out of their tents and pack up and then they start scrambling for the Lighter Company boats to avoid the toil of having to row and pole the heavily laden supply boats. Pike was incensed. He picks up a still smoldering log from one of the camp fires and flings it a the slackers and then picks up another and another and very quickly order is restored. Whats going on here is that to pike, shirking of physical duty is the worst kind of dishonor. Its a violation of the code of selfsacrifice for the nation, and it calls for bodily discipline, in this case through pelting of firewood. So, life at the frontier fort gave pike lots of opportunities to discipline other peoples bodies and soon he would get his own opportunity to test his own fortitude. So, one day in late 1803, Merryweather Lewis came to where pike was station it. Lieu was was looking for a few men, hardy in body and soul and spirit, to accompany him on a grand adventure, a core of discovery, all the way to the pacific ocean. He had already selected hid lieutenant for that trip, a man from a prominent kentucky military family, his name was william clark, so you know, lewis and clark. So pike was not under consideration for this particular expedition but lewis had an intriguing suggestion. Or proposition for pike. He said that president Thomas Jefferson was planning to send out several more expeditions to explore the recently acquired louisiana territory, and he wanted them to be led by, quote, the armys most capable officers. Dead did pike want to lead one, lewis asked . He sure did. In the spring of 1805 when orders came to lead an expedition to the head waters of mississippi he was ready to embrace the physical sacrifice that exploration would require, and sacrifice he did. His orders said to come home by december 1st. 1805. But he overreached those orders. He stayed up in the minnesota wilderness, and spend a very cold, hungry, and exhausting winter there. And he comes back the following spring and actually make note of the fact that he is overstepping his orders. His supervisor, this guy right here, who well talk about more in a second wrote to the secretary of war that pike is a very good soldier but has a habit of overstepping his orders, and pike is going to do this again before were done with him tonight. Anyway, so by this time, pike is 27 years old, and what has he learned . So far . Well, he has absorbed the culture of the early republic, but he is refracted it. He doesnt take it literally but refracted it through his physical experience on the frontier, and he has come to the conclusion that bodily sacrifice for the nation is the best way to win the countrys gratitude to win honor and glory and social advancement. He tests this theory in minnesota one of those summertime photographs. He was there in the wintertime, of course. He tests this theory in the minnesota wilderness, at its limit, and it works. He comes back, and he not only wins the praise of his military commanders but he gains the attention of president Thomas Jefferson, who lauds his accomplishments as well. Within three days think about how his wife felt. Hes been gone for nine months and within three days he gets back on to st. Louis and given another highprofile assignment. With another opportunity to sacrifice and win glory on behalf of the nation. And its this second assignment that is going to bring him to the valley where he had to abandon sparks and daugherty. That brings me to the the end of the first part of my presentation. Now id like to fastforward and join him in the middle of his expedition. This an overview of pikes second expedition. It begins here actually i have a pointer here begins here in st. Louis, on july 15, 1806, and the first part takes him across the great plains, to a little detour to pay a diplomatic visit to the pawnee indians who the United States was courting an alliance wi